Chapter 21
Not in Vain Did They Die
2The 1914--1918 World War marked not only the high point of the warehouse era but the ‘‘peak’’ and crisis of many other force trend curves. Its outbreak signalized the attainment by feudally capitalized trade of a saturation of export markets within the geographical limits of the world.
3 The discovery in 1909 of the North Pole, and in 1910 of the South Pole, signalized the end of man’s pioneering penetration within sensorial geographical limits. A World War within a few years to divide up the now limited spoils of land claimage was certified by these polar discoveries. If trade had been established with Mars, presumably providing ample outlet for all of the feudal capitalists’ exploitation of Earthians’ productivity, there would not have been a World War.
4 It is to be noted that these terminal physical discoveries coincidentally overlapped the nativity inventions of the new era, penetrating into, and structuring upon, the 96% vaster and non-compromisable riches of the non-sensorial forces of the universe, discoverable and employable only through intellect and faith.
5 The War concluded the colonization in-flow to the American continent. Shortly thereafter, and for the first time in the four hundred year history of the colonization, immigration fell below emigration. Cross-bred, longing, industry-incubating America had become outflowing, deliquescent.
6 Constructively, the War initiated the application of the industrial principles to machines for consumer use in contradistinction to the dominant manufacture of scientific ‘‘behind the scenes’’ machinery for the production of non-mechanical consumer goods. Particularly notable among the mechanical products for consumer use were the telephone, electric light, and automobile, which made possible the populace’s individual turning of night into day, miles into inches, and the coursing over roads theretofore used primarily by the trading exploiter and his servants. The end of the War marked the ascendancy of passenger miles per capita transported by automobiles over passenger miles per capita carried by the railroads. Today, only twenty years later, the auto carries U. S. man 26 miles for every 1 that he rides on the R.R.; and air travel is fast rising and already carries 1/30 the U. S. passenger mileage of the R.R.
7 The Chart of Inventions at the end of the book reveals strikingly the abstract inventions at the turn of the century and up to the World War, as well as the contiguous mechanical inventions of the same period attained only through high intellectual activity and imagination which inevitably presaged an entirely new, world-populace-integrating era of scientifically dictated survival.
8 The advent of popular intercommunication signalized the breaking down of the Time-and-Space that had intervened between consumer-workers, and which, by isolating them as individual units, had hitherto rendered them highly exploitable by the feudal capitalist.
9 All three—the automobile, telephone and electric light—were products of the most extraordinary mathematical calculation and high scientific rendition. Of the three possibly the automobile--which Ford conceived of as mass-producible for a popular market (while other producers lingered over their manufacturing on a tailoring basis solely for the feudal lord and his well paid trustees)—was the most significant. At the time of the World War the automobile was a crude vehicle and its quantitative output relatively small, but it was none the less an attained phenomenon. Throughout all prior ages no one thing so symbolized dominance by the material overlord as did the horse. By virtue of his control of the horse, the overman had been able to traverse more space, capture outlying undiscovered sources, win wars, and accomplish more work than was possible by any on-foot peasantry. Anyone who could claim a horse was a potential feudal leader.
10 Early feudal leaders, fearful and arrogant, arrayed themselves in armor that was ever more impregnable, but at the same time was so increasingly complicated and heavy that the picture of Alice and the White Knight, which seems ridiculous and amusing, truly represented the ultimo fact of the progression. These men actually had to be hoisted by a group of servants onto their horses, also armored, that is, about their tops and sides. Despite the clumsiness of their paraphernalia a few feudal leaders, thus armed and mounted, could ride upon serfdom certain of easy conquest.
11 The Battle of Cressy marked an historical turning point in the overthrow (much later to be made irrevocable, however) of mounted feudalism by serfdom. At this juncture the serfs put their addled but survival-activated heads together and evolved the idea of a deployed line, armed with pikes. While the enemy was charging, these pikes could be swiftly implanted in the ground, their points pitching forward at an angle that would impale the unarmored undersides of the oncoming horses. The ‘‘pikers’’ were successful in unseating the armored knights who, lying helpless on the ground, became the easy victims of the meagerly and light armed serf.
12 The 1914--1918 World War marked the end of the traditional mounting of military pawns of feudal leaders, i.e., the cavalry, although a nouveau riche ‘‘aristocracy’’ still confusedly goes ‘‘horsey’’ on the first ‘‘one hundred grand.’’
13 With the inception by Ford of a mechanical vehicle for mass use, not only was the populace suddenly provided with one ‘‘horse,’’ but 30 to 100 ‘‘horses’’ each. With one fell swoop the serf, if he had a job and could drive, was made the physical equal or superior of his historic master without the latter’s vain display. This mechanical end product irrevocably broke down the class system in America despite pretty pretense otherwise.
14 The World War established additionally, beyond all possibility of elimination from the social progression, the already invented attainment of the airship and aeroplane which, by their war-extensive
15 successful use, gave to man the practical realization of his throughall-time-dreamed-of ability to fly, the potential of which, in man’s thinking, certified his inevitable victory over ALL space and time. The significance of the REALIZATION OF FLYING is so far-reaching as to be beyond calculation, though it may be dimly appraised in the world-wide, nation and breed surmounting, exultation and ‘‘god’’ making of Lindbergh’s achievements.
16 The War marked, also, the attainment of the popular recognition of the superior practicality of communication by radio, though like the aeroplane the radio in 1918 was still not popularly available. The radio conferred to all an eventual ability to communicate across worldspanning and even star-spanning distances, instantly, wirelessly.
17 Both AVIATION and WIRELESS were INSPIRATIONAL to a popular REVOLT against MONOPOLY dominance.
18 Another result of the World War was the attainment of popular participation in ‘‘higher,’’ or college, education, leading youth into realms of physics, chemistry, medicine and engineering on a remunerative basis. Prior to 1914, despite a plenitude of popular higher educational establishments, no means of teleologic pioneering was practically open to the student other than to increase the entrenchment of monopoly through the application of acquired knowledge to the improvement of the efficiency of the mechanism of exploitation, by means of which the exploiter was turning out cheap, rustable and breakable end products.
19 Feudal capital, unwitting these emergences, was now fighting for supremacy in the no-further-extensible world markets. During the War, capital profited drunkenly from the fabulous outlet for source-monopoly materials involved in the destruction attending war:—thousands upon thousands of tons of sunken ships called for thousands upon thousands of tons of metal for replacement. So secure did he feel in his power to manipulate ‘‘scarcities’’ and governments by controlling them with legal ‘‘frame-ups’’ concocted by his lawyerservants out of the rules of the ‘‘divine right’’ of property, that he had neither worry about nor intimation of the inevitable emancipation from his exploitation which he was unintentionally accelerating, with his high-profit World War activity, for his former victims.
20 The myriad of ramifications of this destructive war-‘‘out’’ blinded the monopolist to the potentials involved in the wedding of general scientific erudition with the mechanical end-products introduced by Ford, Edison, Bell, Singer, et al., which were destined to overthrow his monopoly dominance.
21 Although the capitalist sensed the character of the profit involved in world warring, his imagination was too circumscribed to encompass the enormous proportions to which, once started, it had necessarily to expand. He had expected to maintain the war as a nicely controlled destructive activity with assured results. Not so the reality! The holocaust ran into figures involving a credit necessity to cover manufacturing and transportation time-lags that far exceeded the combined extant and on-paper-accounted-dollars value of the property controlled by all capitaldom.
22 Wages alone of workers and fighters called out of the vast unemployment cumulatives of machine replacement were far in excess of the total of private capital or ‘‘credit’’ coverage. Wherefore, capitaldom was in a predicament of more than momentary duration. However, the ‘‘lawyers’’ found an ‘‘out’’ through the medium of capitaldom’s political control of governments, which made it possible arbitrarily to expand government credits WITHOUT COLLATERAL through the apparent sanctity of the good old ‘‘sovereignty.’’ Little did they realize that, in a semi-industrialized era, the invocation of non-collateralized government credit was the invocation of popular credit, of which governments are the acknowledged legal representatives in contradistinction to the ‘‘private’’ characteristic of credit in early ‘‘sovereign’’ days.
23 So accustomed was capitaldom to the notion that it could manipulate government through political gangsterism that it was a matter of no concern to it—if it thought of it at all—that it was drawing on true per capita credit, for, in its own terminology of ‘‘interpretation,’’ it was only multiplying the potential and in-due-course-to-be- accounted per capita ‘‘debt’’ to itself, capitaldom.
24 This governmental credit to finance profiteering was so gratifyingly adequate for the nonce that capitaldom drank deeply of it, even to the point of inebriation. Hence by the time the world’s populace had sickened of warring to the extent of insisting, by popular demand, on cessation of the slaughter, the governmental or popular credit which had been invoked and which, therefore, had been irreparably set up on the books in accountants’ figures, was three times as great as the total of capitaldom’s war-swollen private credit, which had previously been the sole source of credit for ‘‘industry’’ as well as for ‘‘government.’’
25 The debt system as it previously had worked out constantly increased in size, due to capitaldom’s maneuvering of the activities to which it had loaned its ‘‘credit,’’ and reached such a state of inability to refund the liquid credit that foreclosure was always inevitable. Inasmuch as the collateral was at least a two to one value against the loan, the debt structure was amplified on a progression of two to one against liquid activities. Thus capitaldom’s amassed credit structure, which we now call ‘‘debt structure,’’ was accountingly established.
26 DEBT STRUCTURE not only sounds like DEATH STRUCTURE, but even in the words of trade is actually so: MORTGAGE, MEASURE-OF-DEATH, MORA-TORIUM, HOLD-OFF-THEDEATH-BLOW. Popular credit is far different from capitalistic private credit which, in fact, is not credit at all, but a collateralized pound-of-flesh debt mechanism.
27 Popular credit, on the other hand, is the very essence of life. It accredits potentials of life behavior. It accredits the progressive ability of men cooperatively to improve their commonwealing. It accredits science with the ability to instrument and with the ordering of men’s cooperation in the betterment of its common wealth.
28 As a result of the World War a three to one ratio was established of the accounted living credit dominance over debt accounting.
29 Not in vain, the sacrifice of millions of lives under the dishonestly propagandized, yet sincerely populace accepted, notion of a war to save democracy! Not only did capitaldom release dominant popular credit from Pandora’s box when it lifted the profit lid of the World War chest, but it let out, also, a set-up of mechanical principles and scientific attainments destined to prove the means for sensible speculation of the popular credit and the establishment of a working mechanism for democracy’s eventual emancipation.